OTTAWA — Canada’s aboriginal leaders want the federal government to “step up to the plate” with funding and a comprehensive plan for First Nations education that addresses problems plaguing children’s learning, both on and off reserve.

More money needs to be directed to gang prevention and intervention within the Canadian justice system, says a prominent gang expert.

“We spend almost all the money in this country and in Saskatchewan in terms of gang-involved people on corrections and policing and suppression,” said Mark Totten, who works on anti-gang initiatives across the country.

Ottawa must not sell out Tsilhqot’in
Approval of copper-gold mine would be a declaration that might is right and greed is paramount

Marilyn Baptiste
From Tuesday’s Globe and Mail
Published on Monday, Sep. 20, 2010

What would you do if another country, many times more populous and powerful, decides that it wants Canada’s water and, after listening to all the reasons why it cannot not simply take it, announces that it is going to do exactly that?

The National Energy Board has issued the guidelines for its Arctic offshore drilling review, revealing a scope of inquiry that is being criticized for being too industry-friendly and avoiding tough issues.

The walk, which was initiated three years ago as a means of raising awareness about the abuse and sexual exploitation of all children in Winnipeg and across the country, starts at the Circle of Life Thunderbird House at the corner of Main Street and Higgins Avenue at 10 a.m. and concludes at The Forks Market.

In part three of a five-part series on the contraband tobacco business, the Post explores the growing debate over organized crime’s role.

On a sunny June day last year, officers from federal, Quebec and Mohawk police stormed into a steel-and-glass industrial complex on the outskirts of this Mohawk reserve, and hauled away several of the people inside.

Christopher Alcantara
Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Wilfrid Laurier University

Last week, the Ontario government announced that it planned to pass the Far North Act, a controversial piece of legislation that is designed to reconcile environmental, business and indigenous interests in Northern Ontario.

Importance of the Arctic Council underlined at the meeting between Canadian Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon and Alexander Stubb

News, 9/20/2010

Lawrence Cannon, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Canada, visited Finland on 17 September at the invitation of Minister for Foreign Affairs Alexander Stubb. The visit was one stop during the Minister’s one-week tour. Cannon arrived in Helsinki after having met his colleagues in Oslo and Moscow.

The governments of Alberta and Saskatchewan, along with industry, making their pro-oil sands cases for some time on Capitol Hill. The environmentalists have also been beefing up their presence. Now come the First Nations leaders:

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A delegation of indigenous leaders from Canada and the U.S. will hold a media briefing in Washington D.C. on Wednesday, September 22. The leaders are in the U.S. capital this week to discuss their concerns over the impacts of tar sands development with high-ranking officials in light of deliberations over the Keystone XL pipeline project.

In part two of a five-part series on the contraband tobacco business, the Post looks at how Ontario farmers are feeding a growing underground economy.

Three months ago, a southwestern Ontario farmer reportedly sold 90,000 lbs. of raw-leaf tobacco, about a tenth of the crop produced on the area’s largest farms, to a shadowy buyer. The eye-popping, secret payment he pocketed in return was $1-million — in cash — close to five times the price he would have commanded on the legal market.

Williams Lake, B.C. – First Nations in the Chilcotin are calling it a case of government hypocrisy.

The Tsilhqot’in Nation wants the BC Government to explain why an area it deemed too sensitive for a lodge expansion in 2004 is now okay for an open-pit mine which the TNG says will destroy lakes, streams and devastate 35 square kilometres of wilderness.

The four communities, the Lac La Ronge Indian Band (LLRIB), Jim Brady Metis Local, Northern Village of Air Ronge and Town of La Ronge joined in signing, on what Chief Tammy Cook-Searson termed a “historic day,” a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), which will lead to the creation of a round table and working group to address the issue of addictions in the area.

BMO Financial Group Presented with PAR Award by CCAB
For its efforts to enhance partnerships with Canada’s First Peoples, BMO Financial Group presented with its third PAR Gold Award

Max Williams | Sun Sep 19, 2010

At the 8th Annual Gala Dinner, BMO Financial Group was presented with a Gold Progressive Aboriginal Relations (PAR) Award by the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business (CCAB) for its efforts to enhance partnerships with Canada’s First Peoples.

The New Big Tobacco: Inside Canada’s underground tobacco industry, a five-part series

September 18, 2010
by Tom Blackwell

They’re surrounded by high fences, security guards and a general air of secrecy; rarely is there any identifying sign. The factories at the heart of Canada’s surprising underground tobacco industry are scattered secretively through four Ontario and Quebec aboriginal communities, operating with virtual impunity and churning out so many cheap, tax-free cigarettes, some critics believe they have brought to a halt a decades-long decline in smoking rates. Yet those plants have also given an entrepreneurial, free-market jolt to depressed native economies, creating boom towns and cigarette mansions. Starting on Saturday, a five-part National Post series will take readers inside the Mohawk-dominated contraband business and its spinoffs, and through the prickly politics that has allowed it to flourish for almost a decade.

A true political survivor
Five years since his cancer diagnosis, Chilliwack’s Chuck Strahl is going full steam ahead

By Darah Hansen, Vancouver Sun; With Files From Postmedia News September 18, 2010

Chuck Strahl is a busy man.

Since his appointment to the Transport, Infrastructure and Communities portfolio a month ago, the Tory member of Parliament from Chilliwack with the squeaky-clean reputation has spent much of his days — and evenings — in endless rounds of meet-and-greets with various government stakeholders, all of them looking to bend the new minister’s ear before the House of Commons convenes Monday.

The family of Brian Sinclair — the man who died after waiting 34 hours at Health Sciences Centre without receiving care — has filed a $1.6-million lawsuit against the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority and the province.

The 1995 armed 31-day standoff over aboriginal title at B.C.’s Gustafsen Lake

The Gustafsen confrontation occurred after about 20 natives refused to leave the property of rancher Lyle James. Tensions peaked on Sept. 11, when thousands of rounds of ammunition were fired after a vehicle driven by activists was blown up by an explosive device buried in the road. The occupation ended peacefully six days later. Fourteen natives and four non-natives were convicted on charges related mostly to trespassing. Wolverine was found guilty of assaulting a police officer and discharging a firearm.

To paraphrase one of my favourite history professors, “It is easier to destroy something than to create something new.”

He was talking about Stuart Britain, and more specifically the beheading of Charles I during the English Civil War — a period when it was popular to discuss dramatically reconfiguring society and politics. Later, France would take this “big bang” approach to its logical conclusion. Their revolution had horrifying results for human rights.

B.C. First Nations lacking capacity to take advantage of development opportunities: Teck Resources

Friday, 17 September 2010

David Parker has spent the better part of the past 20 years travelling throughout the Americas negotiating business deals with aboriginal groups. Today, he’s vice-president of sustainability at Teck Resources Ltd. (TSX:TCK.A/TCK.B), B.C.’s largest mining company.

The family of an aboriginal man found dead after spending 34 hours in an emergency department says it will sue a Winnipeg hospital, medical staff, the regional health authority and the Manitoba government.

They’re surrounded by high fences, security guards and a general air of secrecy; rarely is there any identifying sign. The factories at the heart of Canada’s surprising underground tobacco industry are scattered secretively through four Ontario and Quebec aboriginal communities, operating with virtual impunity and churning out so many cheap, tax-free cigarettes, some critics believe they have brought to a halt a decades-long decline in smoking rates. Yet those plants have also given an entrepreneurial, free-market jolt to depressed native economies, creating boom towns and cigarette mansions. Starting on Saturday, a five-part National Post series will take readers inside the Mohawk-dominated contraband business and its spinoffs, and through the prickly politics that has allowed it to flourish for almost a decade.

Get ready for fight over north, natives tell province
Leaders worried they will lose control of lands under proposed legislation

By Lee Greenberg, The Ottawa Citizen September 17, 2010
Ontario is heading for conflict with First Nations, native leaders said Thursday after the province moved ahead with contentious legislation governing northern development.

Twenty years ago, during the summer of 1990, members of the Mohawk Nation in Quebec mobilized to stop the City of Oka and private developers from building a golf course and luxury condominiums on their traditional lands, some of which contained burial grounds.

THE province has reached a multimillion-dollar settlement in a 20-year-old dispute with the Cross Lake community council over the devastating effects caused by the Churchill River diversion project that will also include thousands of hectares of land in compensation.

Twenty years ago, on July 11, 1990 a conflict between Mohawks and whites at the town of Oka, just west of Montreal, turned into a fusillade of gunfire and a police officer was killed when the Sûreté du Québec moved in to enforce an injunction against a native blockade. At issue was the town’s plan to expand a golf course on a piece of disputed land in the community of Kanesatake. The escalating crisis gripped the country, and in August the Canadian army stepped in. The standoff finally ended on Sept. 26.

Native blockades and confrontations with resource-based industries will be the inevitable result if Premier Dalton McGuinty rams through the Far North Act without satisfying First Nations’ demands for consultation, the province is being warned.